Advance track by Matias Aguayo & The Desdemonas

Renowned DJ & electronic music producer Matias Aguayo will soon be releasing the debut album of his new band The Desdemonas. We're happy to share Nervous, a first track from the album.

Nervous was recorded live at the Gewölbe in Cologne, and will appear in Matias Aguayo & The Desdemonas' LP Sofarnopolis (out in Oct 2017 on Crammed Discs). It tells the story of a nightly encounter with a girl floating in purple light and glowing in the dark. It's a scene from Sofarnopolis' dystopian narrative (which will also be unfold in cartoons and videos based on Matias' drawings).

On this track, Aguayo sings and plays the "Mona", Gregorio Gomez is on guitar, Henning Specht on keys and Matteo Scrimali on drums.

Juana Molina : accolades and tour

Her new album "Halo" gets impressive kudos, while she gets ready for a tour in Europe and Argentina

Juana Molina's mesmerizing seventh LP is unanimously acclaimed by US & UK media, from Pitchfork ("her strongest") to Mixmag ("endlessly bewitching"), the Sunday Times ("An album veering on genius"), MOJO ("Finest yet from the idiosyncratic electronicist") and Libération ("Her most spellbinding album to date"). More press quotes below.

And so is her new video "Paraguaya", featuring her famous mother, actress Chunchuna Villafañe, appearing as a witch who teaches Juana how to prepare a love potion, which ends up not working...

Finest yet from the idiosyncratic electronicist. A treat where acoustic and electronic elements thrive in magical harmony. Halo digs deep into the unknown and brings back unexpected brilliance. MOJO (UK)

Argentinian experimentalist's eerie, excellent seventh. Haunting, bassy and electronic. Molina has managed to tap into a fertile, mysterious muse. (Uncut, UK)She's spent the last two decades constructing her own magical world with experimentalist electronica as her base. It's endlessly bewitching. (Mixmag, UK)

Juana Molina doesn't just write songs, she creates environments (Stereogum, US)A deep sense of spiritual ritual spreads across Halo, through spry dances animated by metallic percussion and zealous chants that echo like secret religious observances happening in deep woods. Each track brings its own weather. (NPR, US)Her most spellbinding album to date, Halo sees Juana Molina revisit her inimitable electronized folk trance, after having dipped her guitar and vocal cords in a cauldron of magic potion. (Libération, FR)

KASAI ALLSTARS

at the core of Alain Gomis’ movie "Félicité"

Inspired by the music of Kasai Allstars and by their vocalist Muambuyi (whose voice is heard in the soundtrack), director Alain Gomis created the main protagonist of his film, a proud woman named Félicité who works as a singer with the band, and sets out on a breakneck race through the streets of electric Kinshasa in order to save her son. The movie just earned the Silver Bear Grand Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and the Golden Stallion at the FESPACO (Panafrican Film Festival).

The band wrote and performed most of the soundtrack, and appears onscreen playing their own part. Muambuyi’s voice is omnipresent, and is being heard everytime Félicité (played by Congolese actress Vero Tshanda) sings in the bars of Kinshasa, backed by Kasai Allstars.

The Around Félicité album includes the film’s main pieces, performed by Kasai Allstars and by the Kinshasa Symphonic Orchestra (who specially arranged three works by composer Arvo Pärt), alongside new tracks by Kasai Allstars, as well as interludes consisting of fragments of dialogues and sound bites taken from the soundtrack.

The album comes with a companion piece: Félicité Remixes, a collection of 10 remixes of Kasai Allstars tracks by electronic music producers from Europe, North America and Africa, including reworks by Clap! Clap!, Daedelus and Africaine 808.

Around FélicitéandFélicité Remixes - LP/CD/DigitalOut in France now - elswhere on April 28th

An itinerant musician, poet, puppeteer, archer, showman and poet, and American exile in permanent residence in Brussels, McCloud Zicmuse conceived "Passé Composé Futur Conditionnel" during a trip on which he revisited the United States after an absence of 15 years.

Watch Gabriela Gonzalez' video for "Mystery Trail", a track recorded with Deerhoof's John Dieterich on guitar

New video by Lula Pena

"Archivo Pittoresco" released on January 27th. Here is one of the songs, in a new video beautifully directed by Catarina Limão.

We're very happy to announce Lula Pena's new album Archivo Pittoresco will be released on January 27th.

Pes Mou Mia Lexi was written by illustrious Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis: "The title means Give me the Word. I adopted it a few years ago, when Greece was the first EU country to experience economic collapse, and so we were all Greek, in a lexical world.” Lula Pena.

HOLIDAY GOODIES FROM CRAMMED DISCS

For all orders of minimum two CD albums and/or vinyl albums placed on the Crammed Discs shop before Jan. 15 !Please note the last day to place orders before the holiday break is Dec. 21 Orders placed after Dec. 21 will ship early January

AND THE PERFECT PRESENT FOR MUSIC LOVERS:

MINIMAL COMPACT "One (Statik Dancin')" ON VINYL AGAIN!

The vinyl reissue of Minimal Compact's debut mini-album (1981) comes out on Nov 18.
It's been remastered from the original tapes, pressed on 180 gr vinyl, and contains a download code.

Fronted by vocalist Samy Birnbach (aka DJ Morpheus, freestyle DJ extraordinaire and compiler of the Freezone series), Minimal Compact were one of the most inspirational bands of the '80s. They blended funky rock rhythms and incisive guitars with flavours from their native Middle East. The band were active from 1981 to 1988, and released 6 studio albums and a live album. They had a large and fanatic following all across Europe and the USA, where some of their tracks became underground club favourites.